6-1: Check Yourself 1. Need Recognition, Information Search,
Alternative Evaluation, Purchase, and
Postpurchase.
2. Wants are goods or services that are not
necessarily needed but are desired.
3. Functional needs pertain to the performance
of a product or service. Psychological needs
pertain to the personal grati+cation
consumer’s associate with a product and/or
service.
4. Performance, financial, social, physiological,
and psychological.
5. A compensatory decision rule assumes that
the consumer, when evaluating alternatives,
trades o1 one characteristic against another.
On the other hand, in a noncompensatory
decision rule, consumers choose a product or
service on the basis of one or a subset of its
characteristics, regardless of the values of its
other a3ributes.
6-2: Factors In4uencing the Consumer
Decision Process
This slide lists the factors influencing the
consumer decision process, which are discussed
in more detail in the following slides.
6-3: Psychological Factors: Motives A motive is a need or want that is strong enough
to cause the person to seek satisfaction. People
have several types of motives, such as those
illustrated in the PSSP hierarchy of needs.
Ask students if there are any products that fulfill
several levels of needs.
They will mention products like an expensive fur
coat given as a gift is physiological, love, and
esteem.
6-4: Psychological Factors: A7tude An attitude is a person’s enduring evaluation of
his or her feelings about behavioral tendencies
toward an object or idea.
An attitude consists of three components:
The cognitive aspect reflects what we believe to
be true, the affective component involves what
we feel about the issue at hand, and the
behavioral component comprises the actions we
undertake with regard to that issue.
6-5: Psychological Factors: Perception Perception is the process by which we select,
organize, and interpret information to form a
meaningful picture of the world. Societies’
perceptions can change.
For example, tattoos used to be only considered
acceptable for unsavory individuals.
They were clearly NOT mainstream, yet today
people from a variety of demographic
backgrounds get tattooed.
Many celebrities have tattoos, even some parents
and children have matching tattoos.
6-6: Psychological Factors: Learning and
Lifestyle
Learning refers to a change in a person’s thought
process or behavior that arises from experience
and takes place throughout the consumer decision
process.
Learning affects both attitudes and perceptions. A
person’s perceptions and ability to learn are
affected by their social experiences.
6-7: Social Factors: Family Many purchase decisions are made about
products or services that the entire family will
consume or use.
Thus, firms must consider how families make
purchase decisions and understand how various
family members might influence these decisions.
Ask students about a purchase that their family
recently made and have them determine the
decision makers and the influencers.
6-8: Social Factors: Reference Groups A reference group is one or more persons whom
an individual uses as a basis for comparison
regarding beliefs, feelings, and behaviors.
A consumer might have various reference groups
including family, friends, coworkers, or famous
people.
These reference groups affect buying decisions
by offering information, providing rewards for
specific purchasing behaviors, and enhancing a
consumer’s self-image.
6-9: Social Factors: Reference Groups Celebrities are often used in advertising because
they have expertise, power, glamour and
consumers want to have these same qualities.
This web link (always check links before class)
goes to an ad in the GEICO campaign in which
they use celebrities (actors) to tell real people’s
stories.
6-10: Social Factors: Culture Culture is defined as the shared meanings,
beliefs, morals, values, and customers of a group
of people.
Like reference groups, cultures influence
consumer behavior.
6-11: Could You Go Without Tech for a
Week
Ask students: Why does this tie into cultural
factors?
Do they think they could go one week?
How does technology influence us as workers,
friends, and family members?
Note: Please make sure that the video file is
located in the same folder as the PowerPoint
slides.
6-12: Situational Factors Situational factors are factors specific to the
situation that override, or at least influence,
psychological and social issues.
These situational factors are related to the
purchase and shopping situation, as well as to the
temporal state as illustrated in this slide.
Ask students: What do certain restaurants or
stores do to make the shopping situation more
pleasant and conducive to purchasing?
6-13: Check Yourself 1. Physiological (e.g., food, water, shelter),
safety (e.g., secure employment, health), love
(e.g., friendship, family), esteem (e.g.,
confidence, respect), and self-actualization
(people engage in personal growth activities
and a3empt to meet their intellectual,
aesthetic, creative, and other such needs).
2. a. Reference groups and culture
b. Family
3. Store atmosphere, crowding, in-store
demonstrations, promotions, and packaging
6-14: Involvement and Consumer Buying
Decisions
Ask students: What was the last thing you
purchased?
Based on their answers, get them to determine
whether they used limited problem solving,
extensive problem solving, or whether it was a
habitual purchase or impulse purchase.
6-15: Types of Buying Decisions Students will mostly likely identify the orange
juice as habitual, Subway as limited, and the car
as extended problem solving.
Ask students: Why is there so much advertising
with these types of products?
It is in part because they are often impulse
purchases.
6-16: Check Yourself
v
1. The high involvement consumer will
scrutinize all the information provided and
process the key elements of the message
more deeply. As a consequence, an involved
consumer is likely to either end up judging
the message to be truthful and will form a
favorable impression for the product being
advertised or alternatively view the message
as super+cial in nature and develop negative
product thoughts
2. Limited problem solving occurs during a
purchase decision that calls for, at most, a
moderate amount of e1ort and time.
Customers engage in this type of buying
process when they have had some prior
experience with the product or service and
the perceived risk is moderate. Limited
problem solving usually relies on past
experience more than on external
information. Extended problem solving,
which is common when the customer
perceives that the purchase decision entails a
lot of risk, entails much external information.
Additional Teaching Tips
This chapter focuses on the consumer buying decision and describes the cognitive process that
consumers experience when evaluating that purchasing decision. It also focuses on the dynamics
of what influences the consumer buying decision.
This chapter is often one that is glossed over by students since they are familiar with making
buying decisions and they know most of the terminology in the chapter. However, what the
student finds difficult in connecting is the process of the consumer buying decision with
marketing strategy. Instructors should emphasize the marketing strategies that can be developed
to make the buying decision more likely. To do that, marketers need to know how their target
market makes that buying decision.
An exercise instructors may want to use is to have students write down the steps in the consumer
buying decision process using a recent purchase experience they have made. Then the students
can switch papers with the assignment of developing the marketing strategy for the buying
process. (Example: If I know people make their buying decision on purchasing diapers based on
Internet coupon availability, as a marketer I would make sure I supplied an Internet coupon to
my target market and communicate that to them.) This exercise gets students thinking about why
they need to learn about the consumer buying decision (to form marketing strategy). Online Tip:
This can be easily transferred to the online forum using the discussion board tools of the
platform. Students can post their buying decision steps of a recent purchase. Other learners can
respond by developing the marketing strategy.